Review of Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc (Movie)

Contains spoilers

I think I'm getting too old for Shonen media at this point.

I went into the Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc movie expecting it to be an 9/10 and what I got was more of a 7 or an 8.

I'll start off with the good, which is the animation. This movie is absolutely peak MAPPA animation. The quality absolutely blew me away - as expected from one of the best animation studios in the industry right now. The fight scenes are fluid, dynamic, and the variety in the environments gives different parts of the fight different vibes.

If I had one complaint about the animation it was that it was a little inconsistent. The way that Studio MAPPA does their animation is that they split it into relatively small chunks which allows individual artists to have a lot more control over smaller pieces of the fight and that allows them to express more of their own style. However, this comes at a cost of consistency. The resulting product can have parts of that have a style that stands out from the rest, and while that doesn't sounds like a negative, when a scene's style doesn't mesh with the scenes that surround it, the shift can be interpreted by the viewer as signifying something about the tone or themes, when in reality, it's just an artifact of the production process. There were a few parts during the main fight where this was noticeable, but it wasn't distracting so I'm fine with it. There was one part that absolutely blew me away - the way the animators showed the impact of a big hit by making the tones much harsher as if the image is overexposed was fantastic. Those few seconds were a genuine 10 out of 10 for me.

Some parts of the fight animation were not as good. In particular, at one point there was a part of the fight that required showing some impact and the way that this particular animator chose to do that was with flashing the screen quite rapidly and I wasn't really a fan of that. It reminds me of the old banned Pokemon episode that caused a bunch of kids to have seizures because it flashed the screen between blue and red very quickly, which of course causes issue for people that are photosensitive. This one was not anywhere near that bad but I wasn't really a huge fan of it. Just flashing the screen is not a particularly interesting as a way of showing that something has impact. Did the animators want those few seconds to stand out but ran out of ideas for how to make that happen?

In the calmer moments, the animation was fantastic. There was nothing I could point to that I disliked. Things that might be taken for granted like the reflection of a flower in water really impressed me in this movie. Overall, I very much enjoyed the animation in this film. There's a reason that MAPPA is considered one of the best animation studios in the industry right now and this film shows off that talent and style.

On another positive note, the sound design was fantastic. The music was great, and incorporated well into the film. From the energetic opening to the quiet ambience of the peaceful moments to the epic swelling of the music at key moments, the music accentuates what is happening on screen throughout the film. The sounds during the fights are good too, but I only say that because I largely didn't pay attention to it as my eyes were glued to the screen. That's good - it means that the sound-scape immersed me into the action. In other words, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Unfortunately, the plot is also typical of recent MAPPA work. Not to say that the studio had a hand in writing the plot, but that the plot of the projects they have taken on recently feels samey.

I can summarize the plot in 2 sentences:

There's nothing wrong with a simple plot, but this was a bit too simple for me. The reason that I mentioned I'm getting too old for shonen media earlier is that I went into this expecting more.

MAPPA is known for their ability to animate fights fight to the absolute highest possible level of quality. This positive reputation results in them up taking on projects revolve so heavily around fights that it becomes even more so their identity as a studio, leading to them taking on more such projects, giving up the opportunity to animate other genres. It's a self-perpetuating cycle. Whether you consider this a bad thing is up to you. Perhaps there is value in a studio having a strong identity even down to the kinds of stories they animate. Studio Ghibli has perhaps the strongest identity of any animation studio today, and that identity has generally been a positive thing for them given the quality of their work. No one's going around saying "I was going to watch that film until I found out it's made by Ghibli". Unfortunately, I am rather brainrotted so I can see this kind of identity being used to form a derisive label for MAPPA - shonen slop. I wouldn't call this film slop, but I can see how people may begin to associate MAPPA with generic battle shonen plots if this trend continues.

This movie had a similar vibe to the Shibuya arc of Jujutsu Kaisen season 2, also animated by MAPPA. Very much focused on the fights, with a minimum amount of context so that the fights are at least somewhat connected to the plot. The fights themselves were fantastic, but if you don't care much for the fights, you won't get much out of it. With this movie I felt a similarly. The first 30 minutes sets up the characters and setting - seeing the characters interact with each other and with parts of the setting gives us some context for this world we're immersing ourselves in, and that part was great. But it is then followed by an hour straight of beautifully-directed fights.

Looking at Freytag's good old story pyramid, the rising action just kept rising and rising and rising, leaving little room for anything else. It felt like the entire story just served to have that fight animated, so if that doesn't tickle your fancy, you will be disappointed with this film.

I enjoyed the resolution - it's tragic, and makes you feel sympathetic towards the antagonist at a point where they're clearly defeated. It gives you some hope that despite what happened, they can have a happy ending, and then immediately tears that hope away from you. It lets you bask in the tragedy of the events (e.g. where did the Angel Devil get the spears from?), prompting you to think a little, though the emphasis here is on little. Maybe I missed something due to my lack of media literacy, but to me its depth seemed like a well-executed puddle rather than a failed attempt at making an ocean. And perhaps that's just fine. 8/10.